


This Is Who You Are

by imparfait



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-27 01:42:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imparfait/pseuds/imparfait
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Experience makes the man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is Who You Are

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2011 Shaggy Dog Swap at Livejournal.

>   
> _It's the strangers in your life  
>  That you'd never thought you'd meet  
> It's the hand that picked you up  
> When you're laying in the street_
> 
>  _It's the hand that cut you down  
>  It's the dream that someone shared  
> When you thought that all was lost  
> It's the friend that wasn't there_   
> 
>
>>   
> _\- "This Is Who You Are" - Trans-Siberian Orchestra_   
> 
> 
>   
> 

  


* * *

When Sirius was twelve, before he'd gone to visit the Potters and after his first nightmare that Walburga was a shadow with fangs and claws that dug into his chest and ripped out his soul, he'd been forced to go to Tokyo. He'd ducked out of the family suite and changed in the back bathroom, by the formal dining hall on the main floor of the hotel. His feet hit the pavement in trainers and the air tasted like freedom.

He kept his denim-wrapped legs to the Wizarding district then, terrified that something would happen if he stepped out into the Muggle world. He'd heard stories enough to fill a lifetime of nightmares, but he'd met Lily Evans and she was a bit of a wet blanket. He hadn't seen her devour a wizard whole to try and steal his magic. She was afraid of spiders and of that eel James once left on one of the low tables in the common room.

Sirius didn't necessarily think there was anything to be afraid of, but he didn't want to take the chance. He spent the days going in and out of eateries, tasting the local food and rocking on his heels in Remus' trainers. He'd never had Muggle clothes - he wasn't allowed - but Remus had seen him wondering at the rubber soles and rough-and-soft denims and had let him some. Just for the summer, until Sirius could manage to buy his own.

The first morning he met a witch who taught him to charm bells to chime in whatever tune he was thinking. The spells rolled awkwardly off his tongue and it took him too many tries. She laughed at him, a soft, tinkling sound that reminded him of the wind-chime she'd set to play an old Wizard lullaby. By lunch he'd gotten it, and by the time he returned to the hotel for dinner the strange orient magic was thrumming through his head like a mantra. He clutched it close; it was a secret, something that belonged to him and him alone. If his mother found out about the old witch in the shop behind the hotel, he never knew.

The fifth morning he met a man who taught him how to fold paper and make it fly. Sirius filled the air with floating cranes, with miniature dragons and bright blue snowflakes. He set flowers floating just above the rushing water in the fountain and he thought about Peter, who could do tricks with coins and cards. This was his trick now: he could make paper fly and bells chime whatever he wanted.

On the sixth morning he went back to England. The magic of the place was locked in his heart and he liked the feeling. When Mother asked him what he'd done to keep himself out of trouble, Sirius said nothing.

* * *

His paper dragon had come back unopened with Moony's name still glowing scarlet on one of the wings. There had been an explosion outside, something dangerous-sounding. Sirius wanted to run full-speed in the direction it came from, but Dumbledore's words echoed through his head about staying put and keeping out of danger. They were only meant to keep watch for something bad happening in the Valley, not to actually get in the thick of anything if it did. Moony was out there with Wormtail, just fresh from a full moon the night before and even though it had been an easy one, Moony's knees had popped when he'd gotten up to join Wormtail on watch. James was gone; he'd had to go back to Hogwarts for rounds and wasn't supposed to be back until after midnight. Prongs' cot was still empty, though, so either he wasn't back yet or he was out there with the others.

He'd sent the dragon off, hoping that Moony and Wormtail would at least let him know they were okay. He stared down at it, still flapping feebly in his hands, and hoped that everything was all right outside. The explosion had been loud enough to rock him out of his sleep; he'd nearly fallen out of bed with surprise. He could hear faint shouts outside. Something was wrong. That didn't mean it was Death Eaters, he thought to himself. It didn't mean anything, just that something exploded. It could've been Slytherins pranking them or James getting a laugh.

He crushed the dragon in his fist and ripped open the tent flap. His eyes were drawn up to the sky and he gasped.

* * *

Winter holidays of third year, Sirius saw a man die. They were staying in Caracas, in a suite that sat high above the din of the city below. He traded his robes for a t-shirt with a band name scrawled across the front, nicked from a fourth year who hadn't figured out locking charms. He didn't know the band and he didn't care.

The streets were full and bustling; the city was dirty and hot even though it was December. He'd read before he left that it was a dangerous place, that even in the Wizarding district people went missing and gangs roamed out in the open. Anyplace was better than the hotel, though, so he found a bookshop and holed up in a battered, filthy chair in the farthest corner from the till. Remus, he realized distantly, would like it here. Even with the crime and the run-down, shabby shops, there was a different sort of feel to the air. There was magic here older than Hogwarts. It wasn't the modern sort, with wands and incantations, but the wonderful will-magic that burned through wizards' veins when they were scared. The kind children used, before it was tamed.

A scraggly old Wizard in an orange hat spoke Spanish to him, low and menacing, from across the aisle. Sirius' governess had taught him five languages, but even still he could only piece together the words. The man rose from his seat, knees popping and joints creaking under his own weight. He found a book, tossed carelessly to the side, and set it on the arm of Sirius' chair. He moved slowly away, back out the front door, and Sirius turned the book over in his hands.

The next morning, before the sun had fully broken over the horizon, a man in the market screamed. Mother pushed him back towards the hotel, away from the sound, but Sirius broke away and rushed forward into the din and dirt and grime to see.

He recognised the orange hat, thrown carelessly into a mud puddle, though it was hard through the blood-red stains. Bile choked up into his throat, burning hot and painful. His eyes teared up at the sight. The man was lying on the ground, sliced from pelvis to sternum, and no one was helping him. He was crying out in his mother-tongue, begging for help. Sirius stood frozen on the spot until the old man's words crashed together in a jumble and he stilled on the muddy ground. Mother's hand clamped on his shoulder and she pulled him away.

They left Caracas that day. When Sirius returned to Hogwarts after the new year, he saw the spiky black horses pulling the carriages and he remembered. He kept the book locked in his trunk, buried underneath a pile of scarlet and gold.

* * *

He'd never seen a Dark Mark before but he knew what they meant. Sirius wanted to throw up at the sight of it. Someone was dead. Panic threaded through his veins and his heart beat furiously against his chest. He was nailed to the spot, unable to move, eyes fixed over his head. He let go of the tent flap and let it fall shut behind him. He counted his steps - five, six, seven - and his skin tingled as he pushed through the boundary of the wards.

Sirius scrabbled for his wand, tucked inside his pocket. He stared up at the glowing green tattooed against the sky and thought _not Moony, please, not Moony_. He remembered orange stained blood-red, how he'd watched a man die. He felt sick at the memory. Bile burned his throat at the thought of Moony sprawled out somewhere, left to bleed and begging until his words ran together.

Someone shouted from across the valley and he tore his eyes away from the sick green skull in the clouds, heart hammering against his ribcage, to look towards the sound. He felt a moment of relief before a green jet of light streaked through the trees. He was running then, stumbling over his still-tired limbs and towards Moony in the distance. He wasn't dead. He was standing.

* * *

Easter Holidays fourth year were the worst. Father forbade him from staying at school and Sirius had fought with all the spitfire in his soul. Of course he'd lost and he found himself in a gold-leaf mausoleum in Brisbane. Everyone seemed dead, from the concierge right down to the guests Mother had over for tea.

Sirius wasn't as scared here. Perhaps it was because they all spoke English, but it might have been because he was fifteen and felt like an adult playing dress up in a child's skin. He had his own jeans and a sweater he'd stolen from Moony for comfort. He did up trainers (the ones that Peter had given him for Christmas) against the back wall of a shop, and he tied his hair up out of his face.

He chanced the Muggle world, taking in the smell of petrol and the fuzzy pictures on the tellies behind shop-windows. The faint buzz of electricity hummed in his ears and he fell in love. He was jealous of Peter, with his squib aunt who he sometimes visited during summers. She took him these places, Sirius knew, and Peter understood the gas and piston magic of the Muggles. He was fiercely jealous of Remus, whose own mother had grown up with these things. She owned a car and they had a little black and white telly that Remus missed when he was laid up from full moons.

In Brisbane, Sirius didn't learn any new magic. There weren't pretty Japanese witches with paper cranes in her hair or grotty wizards with arthritic joints and mud-caked nails. He met a boy named Daniel with dry, wheat-coloured hair and a crooked smile. He was three years older and he plonked a helmet onto Sirius' head and drove him around the city on his motorbike. It was like flying, Sirius decided, but maybe better.

He couldn't understand what Daniel told him. His accent was thick like honey and he had a laugh that made Sirius shiver. They went to the cinema in the afternoon. Sirius was overwhelmed with excitement at everything new around him. He barked out laughs every time something exploded on the screen and he _loved_ it, couldn't wait to go back to Hogwarts and tell James every detail, to drill Moony and Peter on every little thing they knew about the Muggles.

The next morning Kreacher found the ticket stub on the floor in his room and told Mother. For months he suffered screaming nightmares, the sort that left him shaking and sobbing in the morning. He couldn't forget the feeling of soul-shattering pain and the sound his body made against the floor. _Cruciatus_ hurt more than anything.

* * *

The ground was hard and he wasn't wearing any shoes, but that Killing Curse had passed too close to Moony for Sirius to care about the sharp bite of pebbles on the soles of his feet. He'd been sleeping ten minutes ago, but it felt like days had crawled by since then. Moony was standing - barely upright, leaning really - at the treeline. Sirius ran toward him because he was terrified. The moon was bright and the valley was bathed in it. Sirius' nerves, wound tight into a knot in his chest, had bubbled over into tears that leaked down his cheeks. Moony glowed under the not-full moon, fuzzy and out of focus.

When he reached the treeline, he stopped suddenly. Moony was three steps in front of him, all pale skin and tremors, but Sirius was rooted on the spot, fear beating an uneven rhythm with his heart. Moony was _bleeding_ and shaking. Sirius could see that his knuckles were paler than the rest of him, pigment-stripped from gripping his wand in his fist.

Moony stumbled forward from the trees and almost fell right into him. Sirius reached out and tugged him close. He knew the shake in Remus' hand, remembered feeling it for months after his own mother had set her wand on him. He pushed his rage down and pulled Moony away from the trees. Whoever'd cursed him would pay for it later, Sirius decided, but first he had to make sure that Remus was okay.

He found them cover behind a tangle of bushes. Moony collapsed to his knees brokenly, gasping for air, and reached for Sirius. His fingers scrambled on his shirt, catching against the cord around his neck. Remus kept whispering his name over and over like a prayer. Fear flooded Sirius' veins, an icy-burn, and he thought that Moony had cracked.

Sirius caged Remus' head between his hands and mumbled every calming charm he could remember. He felt the magic work its way out of his fingers and by the time Moony stopped trembling his hands were numb and his arms felt like lead. Wandless magic bit into him hard and ate away at his energy but this was _Moony_ and Sirius knew that touch was helping him, too.

 _Please_ , he pleaded to himself when Moony closed his eyes. _I love you._

* * *

In '75, Sirius spent Christmas Eve on the Knight Bus. An old witch tracked him with his eyes as he sat down; she smiled sadly at him over her knitting. He wondered if she could see the tear-tracks on his cheeks or if she noticed that he had a bruise blossoming on the pale line of his jaw. His fingers shook as he straightened out his cloak. He smoothed his hand down the seam and tried not to cry, thinking about everything but what had just happened.

He was going to James, and if James wouldn't have him he didn't know what he'd do. He couldn't run to Peter - the Pettigrews hated the Blacks, always had, and would forever. He thought of Moony and his soft laugh and softer hair, scars tracked along his arms and his muted jumpers that smelled too much of mothballs. He couldn't go to Moony. He wouldn't. He'd rather live under a bridge than bring the wrath of the House of Black down on the Lupins.

The old woman asked him if he was going far and when Sirius shrugged, she sidled over on her cot and patted the spot next to her. Sirius stood, body aching with too-hot and too-cold at the same time. He sat beside her and listened to her spin stories like spiderwebs as she looped her needles over one another.

He'd calmed enough to speak by Wales and she somehow sensed it. He told her stories, mindless memories of misadventures in the dungeons. When they passed through London again, she asked him where he was going. He wiped his nose on the sleeve of his robes and told her he was going home.

They were quiet then, while a tiny slip of a man got off at The Leaky Cauldron. When the bus rumbled back to life and sped off, away from London, the witch cleared her throat and showed him her knitting. She wove threads of gold and silver between her stitches with her fingers, wandless and wordless, and Sirius asked her if she could show him.

By the time the bus stopped off in Godric's Hollow, the tear-tracks on his cheeks were dry and his fingers were sore with effort. She patted him on the hand before he stood up and told him he'd get it, that he just had to try harder. She wished him a happy Christmas as he jumped down the last step.

He never saw the witch again, didn't know if she lived or died, but two months later he'd pressed his hand flat against his bedsheets, golden thread sandwiched between his skin and the soft material. When he pulled away, it'd stitched itself into a star.

* * *

The last calming spell died on Sirius' lips when Remus opened his eyes. He didn't look cursed-crazy anymore, just tired and dazed. Sirius choked on air, caught between a sob and a sigh of relief. Moony slid his hand into the tangle of Sirius' hair and pressed into him. He was all gangly limbs and hard angles, but Sirius had never felt anything better in his life. Sirius felt the panic ebb out of his bones, replaced with relief that felt white-hot and cold at the same time. He was shaking now, worse than Moony, but that was all right.

Words got lost somewhere on his tongue. All Sirius could do was breathe until Moony mumbled into his shoulder that he was okay. He pulled away and it hurt, an echo-memory of loose teeth being yanked out when he was a child snapped across the back of his mind, but it was gone like his words before it formed all the way.

Sirius wiped at the blood on Moony's cheek, frowning when Remus flinched. He knew how to knit skin back together, though it was harder than lacing golden thread into a cloth, and he could've done it with a press of his palm against Moony's skin or his lip but his hands were dirt-caked and trembling. Remus had enough scars without Sirius giving him any more. He didn't want to take the chance.

He hauled Remus up onto his feet. The path back to safety led through the trees or across the moon-lit valley. There was death in the trees but the valley was wide open. He'd chanced his luck across it once, and Sirius could feel the cold fingers of fate pushing him forward, daring him to try it again.

* * *

In the summer of '76, Sirius bought a motorbike and charmed her to fly. When Moony came at the end of July, he took him up into the clouds. They came down freezing and wet, both laughing too hard at the way the birds had startled so easily and Sirius had kissed him. It wasn't a revelation. Moony didn't stumble backward, shocked, and run away. They stood there for a moment, foreheads together, eyes closed, and then Remus had asked him to do it again.

That night, curled underneath a pile of blankets in his bedroom, Sirius wondered if they'd been slip-sliding toward this for the last two years. He remembered Daniel in Brisbane, with his almost-Moony smile and just-too-light hair and decided that they had.

Nothing changed. They ran to the river with Prongs and Wormtail, shucking their shirts and trainers and trousers on the way, leaving them like a trail of breadcrumbs back to the side door of the Potters'. Sometimes they kissed. Moony looked at him strangely now and then, like he couldn't figure out what was going on in Sirius' head, but that wasn't anything new at all.

In August, before Remus left to go home for the full moon, Sirius opened up the motorbike on the road outside the village. Moony's shouts were drowned out by the roar of the motor and the wind whipping by, but his arms were tight around Sirius' waist.

They stopped somewhere along a river. The sun was sinking in the west, serving as a reminder that the time was slipping away. They fumbled for words between bites of half-smashed sandwiches. Nothing changed, but everything had. After sandwiches they fell silent. Sirius plucked grass out of the ground and looked everywhere but Moony's face. He was going home and that somehow made it real, like Sirius had to recognise that there'd been a shift somewhere. Moony wasn't just his mate anymore, not some bloke he teased and wrestled and took care of when he was sick.

When Moony left in the morning he promised to write. August stretched out in front of Sirius, a scorching eternity of not knowing, and he wondered if Moony would kiss him in September.

* * *

The treeline wasn't far from the tent - the length of a Quidditch pitch, maybe two - but with zero cover and barely anything to defend themselves with (no cloak, no map, a single wand between them), if someone came up on them, Sirius didn't know if he could hold them off. He'd gotten across the valley by sheer luck the first time, running at full speed. Moony was still shaking off a _cruciatus_ and stumbling a little with every step.

Another scream echoed through the Forbidden Forest. He yanked Moony forward and he fumbled over his own feet, one hand gripping Sirius' arm so tightly, he was sure he was going to have a hand-print-bruise in the morning. If they made it to morning.

They cleared the trees and Sirius quietly cursed the moon. Anything would've been better than almost-full, when Moony's knees still popped without being curse-strained and the Valley was washed out with light. Darkness would've given Sirius something to work with. He was good at sneaking around in the dark. He counted his steps: twelve, seventeen, twenty. They were almost there.

Something moved in the distance - he saw it out of the corner of his eye. Bright red light flashed over his head and he spun, Moony behind him, and lit his wand with a thought. He tried to convince himself it was friendly fire until he saw silver glint in the distance. He cursed the whole universe because they only had one wand and he was crap at dueling.

The Death Eater stepped forward again, close enough that Sirius could make out the fuzzy details on his death mask and he stepped forward, wand gripped tight in his shaking fist.

 _I would die for you_ , Sirius thought. Moony's fingers were digging into his shoulder and he felt him pull back, trying to tug Sirius away but the Death Eater was too close and there was nowhere to duck behind for cover. Sirius reached back and caught Moony's wrist, he squeezed it tight and felt the charm he wore around his wrist dig into his skin.

The Death Eater surged forward, closing the distance between them fast, but Sirius didn't move. He kept his wand level even though he was shaking and he realised, somewhere between absolute panic and certainty that he was going to die, that he'd kill for Moony, too, because things _had_ changed.

A flash of green drowned out the moonlight.

* * *

When Alphard Black died in '77, he left Sirius everything he had. The solicitor had sent him a notice in stark black letters telling him that he owned, among other things, a cottage in Wales and a small army of Crups.

He sold the Crups but kept the cottage. It was settled in a lea surrounded by trees. The garden was overgrown, all purples and reds, and made him sneeze. The shed in the back was perfect for his motorbike. Sirius loved it all, from the paisley print couch down to the leaky faucet in the bathroom. The Potters had given him a home but this was something entirely his, made up of equal parts wood and brick and freedom.

James threw him a housewarming with too much alcohol and explosions. Between gillywater and fireworks, Moony found him and gave him that smile, the one that made heat coil low in his belly. When the guests were gone and the fireplace smelled like too much Floo Powder, Moony stayed behind. They curled against each other on the porch-swing, watching the garden faeries light up the sky.

Sirius took him to bed - his bed, _their_ bed, maybe, when he got up the nerve to ask - and for a while the pulse of the world outside stilled. This belonged to them: moments stolen while reality hammered like raindrops against the windowpanes. Sirius ignored it in favour of Moony, laid out against blue cotton and blurred by the dim candle light.

The sun started her lazy crawl across the sky before they fell asleep. When Sirius awoke to the warm heat of the afternoon with Remus curled around him, he tugged him close. He pressed a ghost of a kiss against Moony's temple and whispered promises into his hair.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Bre, who fixed my mistakes and tore me up in the way only a friend can. Thanks to k7, Panda, and S for listening to my mumblings about fanfic in fandoms they don't read, for cheering me on, and being the greatest brainstormers and sounding boards I could ask for. Of course, the hugest thank you to ravengrimm for the art, which is beautiful in more ways than I could ever write down. I did it as much justice as my fingers could manage. This was a truly a journey, one that took over fifteen discarded first drafts to get here. I hope you liked it.


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